Aaron Rodgers on historic run at Lambeau Field
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Aaron Rodgers isn't the sole reason the Green Bay Packers continue to dominate at home. But the star quarterback's borderline flawlessness at Lambeau Field reached historic levels in Sunday's 53-20 triumph over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Rodgers is now up to 29 touchdown passes and 322 consecutive pass attempts at home since his last interception. Both streaks date to the 2012 season and are the longest in NFL history, the latter on Sunday surpassing Tom Brady's 288 set from 2002 to 2004.
"It's about taking care of the football," Rodgers said. "We talk about it all the time with (coaches) Alex (Van Pelt) and Mike (McCarthy) and Tom (Clements). If you take care of the football, you give your team a chance to win."
Rodgers is doing more than that. He has a shot at his second MVP, with 28 touchdown passes and three interceptions for a Packers team that grabbed a share of the NFC North lead Sunday at 7-3. Nine of those TD passes have come the past two weeks in blowouts of the Chicago Bears (55-14) and the Eagles — the first consecutive 50-point outputs in team history.
The numbers could be even more off-the-charts, except Rodgers has gone to the bench early in the Packers' past four home games, which all ended in lopsided wins by a combined score of 188-61. He passed for 279 yards in the first half alone Sunday as the Packers built a 30-6 lead.
"He was on fire early," Eagles coach Chip Kelly said. "He is an extremely accurate passer. We knew that was the deal coming in and we didn't do a good enough job getting after him. He was as advertised.
"I think he is playing as good as anybody in the league. You look at some of the balls he throws: Extremely accurate, on target. If you blitzed him, he got it out quick. If you didn't, he held it until guys got open. He got it to everybody."
One advantage for Rodgers at Lambeau Field: The Packers' no-huddle offense is a lot easier to operate amid pin-drop silence than in, say, the raucous Louisiana Superdome, where they suffered their only loss in their past seven games Oct. 26.
But that's just part of the reason Rodgers is picking opponents apart. He's as good as anyone at manipulating defenses before the snap, can extend plays with his feet and showed off his pinpoint accuracy on a 64-yard strike to Jordy Nelson out of the gate Sunday that set the tone.
"I need to figure out new ways to compliment Aaron, frankly," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. "He's playing at an extremely high level."
In a season marked by gaudy passing numbers, only reigning MVP Peyton Manning has thrown more touchdown passes (30) than Rodgers — and Manning has thrown three times the number of interceptions (nine). Rodgers' 120.1 passer rating is by far the best of any full-time starter.
Next up: A visit to Minnesota to face coach Mike Zimmer's defense, which doesn't yield a ton of yards through the air (225.2 per game) but has allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete 67.6% of their passes and gave up three TD throws to Jay Cutler in Sunday's 21-13 loss at Chicago.
"We've got to be playing this way as we continue on," Rodgers said. "It's probably not going to be 50 points every game, but we need to be efficient on third down. We were 8-for-13 tonight. We could be a little better in the red zone — we were 2-for-4.
"We focus on the little things, situational football, and all those individual statistics and awards kind of take care of themselves."
Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.
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